In Netflix’s newest drama sensation The Hunting Wives, Malin Åkerman plays her Texas housewife character as a femme fatale. Margo is the queen bee of suburban Maple Brook with a wide smile and cowboy boots that hide an array of secrets: an unstable childhood in a trailer park, an ascension to her businessman husband’s side through sex work, an array of extramarital relationships. Margo does whatever she wants, and Åkerman gives her spontaneity an easy grace.
But once her husband, Jed (Dermot Mulroney), decides to run for governor on a pro-gun, anti-abortion, happy-marriage platform, Margo realizes the increased public scrutiny could threaten everything she has built for herself, exposing elements of her life Jed’s voters won’t like. Such as the abortion she just had after her boyfriend, a high-school student, got her pregnant; the murder she committed to cover up that fling; and the affair she’s currently having with new-to-town Sophie (Brittany Snow). The Hunting Wives churns through plot as Margo and Sophie hook up, Margo frames Sophie for the murder, and the couple break up, get back together, and break up again. The season’s cliffhanger ending drives another wedge between them as Sophie, mistakenly convinced that Margo has sent her brother, Kyle (Michael Aaron Milligan), to kill her, instead kills him. For Åkerman, the series’ deft moves through comedy, thriller, noir, and mystery are exactly what make it so bingeable; it became a hit on Netflix after all eight episodes premiered on July 21. (The Lionsgate Television show was originally commissioned by Starz, then picked up by Netflix after Starz and Lionsgate split in May.)
“This show moves pretty quick. It’s not a slow pace or, like, I hope they kiss by episode whatever. We’re diving right in there,” says Åkerman from Sweden, where she’s visiting her mother. During filming, she says, the series’ creative team described Margo as a bit like Melania Trump, someone who “came into a marriage to this rich man as one woman,” then finds the expectations for her have shifted once he becomes politically ambitious. “That was the only reference, really,” Åkerman says. “Other than that, it’s just high society. I’ve mingled with aristocrats and high-society people and seen the games that go into it. For lack of a better word, I wouldn’t say ‘authenticity’ is how those people lead.”
You’ve said of Margo, “Everything is an agenda. I would take everything she says with a grain of salt.” Where did you find sincerity within her?
She’s a survivor. Everything she’s doing, there’s a reality to it. For me, it was played more out of necessity: These are the things she needs to move up in her agenda for her life. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t get thrown off. Sophie, for instance — that’s a new shiny toy she hasn’t seen in a while, this really bright, emotionally intelligent woman who stands her ground and is not one of the wives.
Approaching it definitely came from a place of survival, and that is where I could relate to her. I moved out when I was 16. Figuring out the world on my own, traveling a lot on my own as a 16-year-old girl, what you run into — grown men and women who try to take advantage — all of that played into who I became as a person and who Margo became as a person. We chose very different paths, but I can understand her from that place. There’s a chameleon aspect to her, but it’s all played as grounded as possible. Otherwise, it becomes a caricature. I always played the scenes with the intention of what she needs in that moment. She will say and do anything. If her husband said, “We have to go and do satanic rituals in order for you to stay where you need to be,” she’ll go do that. It just happens to be church, and that’s what she needs to do in order to stay in the good graces of her territory. She learns how to play people, which is kind of politics, really.
She uses her sexuality as a weapon. I’m thinking of her opening scene, when she immediately undresses while introducing herself to Sophie.
I love that scene. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It was really brave and really forward, like a female version of a dick-swinging contest. We’re like, Tits out, baby! You want to challenge me? No? All right, you can stick around. It’s testing the waters. We’ve all seen men do that over and over again. And growing up modeling, you learn that your sexuality can be powerful whether you decide to use it or not. Men have their power and women have their power, and that is one of the things women wield; we know we can make people bow down at our feet. It depends on how much integrity you have as a person and how far you’re willing to go. Margo just goes for it. She has her boundaries, which are very different from my own. But I can understand leading with sexuality, where there’s a freedom to saying, I don’t care. Why shouldn’t I, if I feel comfortable with it? If I want to do this, then I’m gonna.
On a certain level, I’m like, is Margo the most feminist character I’ve ever encountered?
But then you see how she is with her husband and how she can cower, and you go, Oh no, she still has to play that game for the man. It’s not like she’s free on her own. She still needs him. The nice house and the money are tethered to the husband.
In the finale, after Margo and Sophie have ended their relationship, Margo comes clean to her husband and gets kicked out, while Sophie has seemingly killed Margo’s brother, Kyle. Sophie picks up Kyle’s ringing phone, Margo is on the other end, and Sophie realizes she misunderstood why Kyle was after her, while Margo suspects that someone has killed Kyle. It’s a really tense moment of mistaken identities and motivations on both sides of the call, even as the women never actually speak. You’ve said you shot it a couple of different ways.
I always want to understand what’s going on in my character’s head. When you’re on set and talking about things, it’s so conversational; there’s no linear thought process. We went back and forth on all the different versions of that, if it was bigger or more contained. In one version, I hear the breathing and I say, “Sophie, is that you?,” which I really liked.
But if you break down that scene into little pieces, it’s the initial relief that, finally, the phone is being answered. She’s been trying to get hold of Kyle. Then there’s the anger of “You better not be disregarding what I said to you about not bothering Sophie.” Then there’s the fear because nothing is happening on the other end. Then there was the figuring out of, Maybe this is Sophie, and what the fuck? We filmed it all the way to when I say “Sophie, is that you?” and the breathing continues and then Margo falls back against the wall and starts melting down. It’s a two-second roller coaster of emotions. We lost my little sister in the airport in Paris when she was very young, and it’s like your whole life flashes in front of you for a second, where you just can’t believe this is happening. That was the feeling I wanted to bring to that phone call, where there are so many thoughts you don’t have time for them all. The panic sets in.
Earlier in the finale, you and Sophie have a big fight in the middle of Jed’s latest fundraiser, where Sophie confronts Margo about killing Abby, and Margo begs Sophie to forgive her and suggests the two of them could still be together. I was wondering the whole time, How honest is Margo being with Sophie right now?
That was a big scene for us — that one and the motel room, where Brittany throws me up against the wall and I’m begging. Those two were the most difficult scenes for me because those are pivotal moments for my character. I always try to personalize things, but I’ve never been in a situation quite like that — I’ve never killed anyone and someone found out about it.
Brit and I talked about it a lot, and the showrunner, Rebecca Cutler, was there and director Cheryl Dunye. I said, “This is the point where she’s at her lowest. The intention in this scene is so important. She has to get Sophie to agree not to tell anybody. This will ruin her life. It’s everything she’s built up until this moment, and someone’s about to pull that away from her.” For me, it was that mother instinct, as if somebody were threatening to take my child away from me. That was what I brought to it: If she walks away, my kid is gone. And I think Sophie is heartbroken and disgusted and mad at herself. Brittany played it beautifully. That was a tough one for me. It’s hard to get yourself there, especially when you’re surrounded by people you love and you’re having a great time on set and you’re like, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to dig that deep and get that sad and angry and upset. It takes its toll.
Where did you want to leave Margo at the end of the season? How is she thinking about her situation and whom is she caring about?
We all can agree that she cares about Sophie, but I do think if it were a choice between Margo’s life and livelihood versus Sophie, she would always choose herself. It’s the personality of a narcissist, this survival instinct. You still want something between these two because you know there’s something there. They connect through their traumas, and subconsciously they’re attracted to each other because of that. I hope we leave the audience with, These two have things to work out, and their journey isn’t done yet. Margo is at the point of fear her wrath — because this is not going to be good when what happened to Kyle comes out.
When Margo is teaching Sophie how to shoot in the premiere, Margo is standing behind Sophie, guiding her body. It’s a very sensual moment that sets the tone for the show to come: We often see close-ups of the women touching each other, long shots of the two prioritizing each other’s pleasure during sex, and moments of them laughing together afterward. Was that blocking scripted, or were you and Brittany able to choreograph it together?
Most of this stuff was a group effort. That was a combination of our director Julie Anne Robinson and Rebecca going, “We want these moments.” There was a lot of talk about hands and making sure we had hand gestures and saw the sensuality in it. It’s foreshadowing, of course, to have these moments for Callie, Jaime Ray Newman’s character, to notice and the audience to be able to see it. It makes apparent what’s happening here — it’s not just a friend going, “Here, I’m going to help you do this for the first time.” Instead, we wanted you to go, “Oh wow, that’s a little extra.”
There’s a recurring discussion online about the male gaze versus the female gaze, and this show has a lot of the elements I consider to be the female gaze — the camera focused on touch, gesture, caress. So much of that comes through in this moment.
Absolutely, and listen, we spoke about that a lot on set. It’s very much the female gaze, and we had really big discussions about that because Brittany and I have to be vulnerable in this show. We wanted to make sure it’s sexy but beautiful and the way we would like to see these scenes play out. Every single director was a female director. Out of the two camera operators, one was female. We had a female showrunner. We didn’t feel pushed. We didn’t feel unsure about anything. It felt like we were protected. It was always conversations, and it felt like we were all talking the same language.
This series was created for Starz, then when Starz and Lionsgate separated, it moved to Netflix. You filmed it intending it to be a weekly show and then it became a binge release. Did you have any thoughts on that change?
I’m so glad it was dropped all at once. It’s perfect for that. It takes a lot of faith in yourself and in your show to drop it weekly, and I’m my own worst critic. I’m never gonna be like, This is gonna be fine dropped weekly. I have more faith in Rebecca and in this show, but I was really nervous because it started as this little show on Starz where you go, All right, we’ll test the waters. We were nervous it was just going to disappear because of the separation — what if it gets swallowed up in this whole divide? When we finally got the call that it went to Netflix, I screamed. I was just so happy it got to see the light of day but also that we’d have that many more eyeballs on it. There are a lot more viewers on Netflix than on Starz.
Have you heard anything about a renewal or what the show would need to do to get renewed?
We have not heard anything. It’s early days, but I’m hoping the fact that we’ve done so well in the first two weeks and there’s been such a buzz is a good sign.
If there were a second season, what sort of arc would you like for Margo? You’ve said it would make sense for her to get back together with Jed because it would both benefit his political image and keep her in power.
That is the most logical, but that’s such a straight-edge kind of answer because it’ll never be that easy. The way Rebecca writes, we’re going to have some major twists and turns and unforeseen events and blows. I would like to see Margo come into her power and take over the fucking world, truly, but she’s a murderer so I don’t know how that’s gonna work out for her. I think she’ll have to reconcile with Jed. I don’t know how she moves forward without doing that. I can’t imagine the relationship will be easier or be the way she wants it. But you can’t put Margo in a cage.
What would you not want to happen to Margo?
I don’t want her to go to jail. I want to keep going. Let’s get a few seasons out of it. Everyone thinks Jill killed Abby, so let’s see how long she can keep Sophie at bay. And now she’s got a terrible ace card with her brother being dead.